James Buchanan argued that Tullock was a “natural born” economist. In this paper, we explore the notion that Tullock, more appropriately, was a “natural born Misesian.” Characterizing Tullock as such, we ask the following question: was Gordon Tullock also an economic imperialist,...

Today, Alchian's quot;Uncertainty, evolution and economic theoryquot; (1950) is hailed by evolutionary economists as a most important piece, which resumed an evolutionary brand of theorizing in economics after the eclipse of the interwar period. On the other hand, Alchian's article is also...

The paper reconstructs Sraffa's assessment of utility-based and individualistic explanations of demand in Marshallian economics in the light of some fresh evidence provided by Sraffa's unpublished manuscripts of the 1920s. It is shown that Sraffa criticised the standard Marshallian explanation...

This paper translates F.A. Hayek's informal capital theory into a dynamic equilibrium model. The focus is restricted to Hayek's largely unrecognized contribution in "Utility Analysis and Interest", published by The Economic Journal in 1936, being restated in "The Pure Theory of Capital", first...

This paper addresses Ludwig von Mises's business cycle theory at maturity, as advanced in his opus magnum Human Action. In this work, Mises embeds the business cycle theory which he initially developed in Theorie des Geldes und der Umlaufmittel into the broad context of his methodological...

This paper explores how a consideration of ontological issues - that is, issues concerned the nature of social reality - informed Elinor Ostrom's analysis of the possibility that local communities can successfully govern common property resources. It is suggested that several ontological issues...

Our forthcoming book, Welfare Theory, Public Action and Ethical Values challenges the belief that, until modern welfare economics introduced issues such as justice, freedom and equality, economists adopted what Amartya Sen called “welfarism.” This is the belief that the welfare of society...

Lionel Robbins's 'An Essay on the Nature and Significance of Economic Science' is frequently cited as one of the most influential works on economic methodology of the twentieth century. Yet, paradoxically, Robbins's Essay is also generally acknowledged to have been significantly influenced by...

This article is the introductory chapter to a festschrift in honour of Geoff Hodgson. In work spanning four decades, Geoff Hodgson has made many path-breaking contributions to institutional economics, evolutionary economics, economic methodology, the history of economic thought and social theory...

Historians of economic thought are paying greater attention to issues of social ontology (that is, to the assumptions that economists make about the nature of social reality). In this paper, we contribute to this burgeoning literature by exploring the hitherto neglected way in which James...